Greenlight for Phibsborough apartment plans

Dublin City Council has granted planning permission to contentious plans for a 184-unit apartment scheme at the Old Bakery site in Phibsborough.

In granting permission to Bindford Ltd the council ordered that three storeys of the 12-storey apartment block be omitted from the scheme at Cross Guns Bridge, Phibsborough.

As part of the CrossGuns Large Scale Residential Development (LRD), Bindford had originally proposed 196 apartments made up of 118 build-to-sell apartments and 78 build-to-rent apartments within three blocks from three to 12 storeys tall. The omission of the three floors cuts the number of units to 184 from 196.

The council granted planning permission despite strong local opposition.

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In recommending planning permission the 49-page council planner’s report concluded that “the proposed development is located at an appropriately-zoned and serviced brownfield redevelopment site within reasonable proximity of good quality public transport, and forms part of a cluster of higher density taller buildings”.

The report stated that subject to reducing the heights of Block C to better account for context and setting, “the proposed development would not impact unduly on existing residential amenities and would not detract from the visual amenity of the streetscape or the setting of the area”.

On the omission of the three floors the planner’s report states that this would reduce the visual impact of the proposal, retain the rooftop amenity space and still create a high density scheme of around 252 units per hectare.

A planning report lodged with the LRD scheme states that the site currently contains a number of unattractive buildings and what is proposed is “an attractive residential development on a zoned serviced site”.

The McGill Planning report stated that the applicants were seeking a seven-year planning permission to account for the prospect of a legal challenge as a previous permission was subject to a legal challenge.

The report stated that Bindford Ltd was anxious to develop the lands “as the site has been targeted for site-activation measures, including vacant site levy and residential zoned land tax”.

One of the third-party submissions was from the Leinster, Ulster and Munster Streets Residents Association and the submission has the support of scores of households in Phibsborough.

In his objection Sinn Féin councillor Seamus McGrattan contended that the apartment blocks “are completely over-scaled for the location, in comparison to the canal and the wider area of Phibsborough Road and surrounding residential streets”.